


Religion in Chibnall's Doctor Who

by Tammany



Series: Doctor Who Meta-Drop [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Analysis, Lit-Crit, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:53:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: An analysis of the religious behavior of the new Chibnall Doctor in "The Tsuranga Conundrum."





	Religion in Chibnall's Doctor Who

I keep thinking about the use of religion in Doctor Who yesterday. Please forgive me: I was a religious studies major who wanted to be a priest. I'm a writer, with a love of both liturgy and poetry. And I've been annoyed simply as a scholar by the way the show has been used as a hobby-horse by those who want to beat religion--especially Christianity--with the club of atheist mockery, which is often blunt, ill-aimed, and smug.

In Doctor Who, generally speaking the only "God" who's allowed to stand at the end of the day or the story arc is the Doctor him/herself, and in that context is presented as a very emo God indeed. Any other divinity has generally proven to be false, and any worshipper of a divinity has tended to be deluded, bigoted, officious, ill-informed, unkind, and murderous, in contrast with supposedly better secular individuals who nonetheless behave quite a bit like Victorian white-man missionaries bringing the True Faith to the savages with their false idols. Religion draws snark and quips on Doctor Who. Generally snark and quip that leave me muttering that they do not know damned much about religion.

Try to find the dividing line between politics, culture, poetry, theater, ethnicity, caste, science, history, and mystic awe. Tell me when it stops being respectable human behavior and becomes mockable Flying Spaghetti stuff? Is it "gods"? I can point you at religions with no gods, and at religions that admit their gods are essentially "made up," and represent only the most evocative fiction a culture could come up with to convey how humans *experience* their universe. Inaccurate science held onto by dogged loyalty to worn out understanding of how the universe works? It surrounds us all, often because real science may be true, but is not always humanly useful--no surprise, as real science is often about inhuman things like gravity, subatomic particles, galactic phenomena, and quantum physics: it's more true than human experience, but a lot less useful TO HUMANS most of the time. Is it rituals? Um--they're universal, even in intensely secular settings. Officious bullying in the name of righteousness? (rolls eyes and merely points at the officious bullying of quite a number of secular and even atheistic groups and individuals)

Religion is a loose term to discuss a set of phenomena and behaviors so broad and so powerful we can't escape the patterns, even when we refuse to call those patterns religion or to accept that they are "the same." The nearest I can come to conveying how not-easy this is, would be to suggest that conservative sub-Saharan Muslims who commit female genital mutilation on their daughters are no *more* guilty of behaving for religious reasons than are American atheists who are determined to wipe out female genital mutilation: both are acting out of deep ethnic imperatives about humanity, gender, cleanliness, justice, group, parenthood, childhood, and on and on and on, that have nothing to do with the official religion of the individual and everything to do with the "religious impulse" that drives them into righteous passion over their own belief.

Doctor Who has seldom been that sophisticated in its handling of religion--and has not had much respect for anyone who knowingly, willingly, practices religious rites or finds comfort in them. Saying a prayer or taking part in a communal service has tended to be treated like lemming behavior, to be laughed at or feared, but not respected. And the Doctor has been at the front of the line making sarky comments and scoffing.

You would not easily believe that religion has comforted millions in times of fear or sorrow, provided a real and positive ethical context with which to evaluate society and individual behaviors, drawn entire cultures into positive discussion of moral and ethical behavior, provided powerful motivation for some of the greatest people in history. Not going by Doctor Who. It has not been a show inclined to admit how many of Earth's geniuses were either religious or openly spiritual. It has been a fiction of mad gods, including the Doctor...but very few saints or seekers.

So it means a lot to me to see that tiny little bit of liturgy, and to evaluate how it's used.

First--it's offered as a gift of honor and respect by Durkas to Ronan, and to honor and mourn Eve. Durkas invites Ronan, an artificial being with whom he's been at odds for most of the show, to perform the funeral rites for the woman they both loved and served. It serves to reconcile the two, and bring them together in shared love and sorrow for the dead.

So that's impressive right there--religion being used positively to bridge differences and create bonds of affection and respect. How novel for Doctor Who!

Then the Doctor herself *asks* if she and the rest of the group can take part, and she clearly both wants to take part, and wants what is being offered for comfort and to honor the dead. She wants to take part in a religious rite for the kinds of positive reasons religion has so often been a part of the rituals of death. It is a comfort, and a shared understanding.

Then there's the liturgy itself: Instead of citing "gods," it calls on saints. That's...amazing. In a fiction that has been filled with mad gods, but no intercessors or guides or great souls (but the Doctor) there are suddenly saints, who guide and who intercede, who offer not rules, but hope. That's a huge amount of theology. Saints are not gods: they neither confirm nor deny gods, but serve and seek and strive, and intercede for us. They are us, only just a little bit better. They go ahead of us into the mystery, and report back.

Chibnal gave us saints, instead of Gods. And he gave us a Doctor who wanted to join that "congregation" and to mourn with the group using a liturgy she can take part in--that she KNOWS. Anyone who's ever tried to take part in a liturgical event they are not trained to deal with can tell you, those call-and-response structures, the trick of knowing the right line at the right moment, in the right rhythm, is a bitch. Either you know it, or you don't. The Doctor knew this ritual, had it down dead cold, and found comfort and meaning in it.

Incantor (Ronan): May the saints of all the stars and constellations...  
Response: ...bring you hope as they guide you out of the dark and into the light, on this voyage and in the next, and all the journeys to come, for now and forever more.

By the end the Doctor's voice is the one voice we hear. Her emotional reaction is the final note. Now think about that liturgy--in the mouth of someone who will not only die, like Eve the dead hero, but who will die and live, and die and live, throughout the stars and constellations, for now and forever more, always seeking, and always struggling to be "the Doctor."

May the saints of all the stars and constellations bring you hope...

In this episode, in many ways, the Doctor was presented as flawed, imperfect, limited--a brilliant seeker, yes. But not Moffat and Davies' mad god. In this episode, she was a simple person surrounded by characters who were each heroic, noble, courageous: saintly, each in their own way. They gave the Doctor hope. They gave her knowledge, and information, and advice.

Chibnall shifted the divine structure of the Doctor Who universe. Which impresses me. I am still not sure I LIKE his stuff. But I do think he's just done something important, and that Moffat and Davies could-not, would-not do: come up with a theology for Doctor Who that allowed the Doctor a role other than mad god. I am impressed.


End file.
